Study: Craigslist flags less than 50% of scam rental listings

Craigslist catches only 47 percent of fraudulent rental listings posted on the site.

Craigslist catches only 47 percent of fraudulent rental listings posted on the site.

Photo: Craigslist

Photo: Craigslist

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Craigslist catches only 47 percent of fraudulent rental listings posted on the site.

Craigslist catches only 47 percent of fraudulent rental listings posted on the site.

Photo: Craigslist

Study: Craigslist flags less than 50% of scam rental listings

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A new study finds that Craigslist catches only about half of the scam rental listings posted on its pages. Moreover, many of these phishing expeditions listings can hang around for up to 20 hours, allowing plenty of time to hook less savvy renters.

The team led by Damon McCoy, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering, discovered 29,000 bogus listings in 20 major cities, including San Francisco, New York, Houston, San Antonio and Seattle. From those, they distilled seven distinct scam categories, most involving credit card payments. They include:

THE CREDIT REPORT SCHEME: The post instructs gullible would-be tenants to click a link and purchase a credit report. The scammer gets a referral commission from the credit reporting website even though there is no property for rent.

THE CLONED LISTING: Listings from other sites are duplicated and posted on Craigslist at a lower price. Prospective tenants are asked to make a rent deposit via wire transfer, which is, of course, the last they will ever see of their money. Analysis of IP addresses and banking wire information revealed that most of these schemes originate in Nigeria.

THE REALTOR SERVICE COMPANY: The sucker is asked to pay both an upfront fee and a monthly membership fee to access listings of pre-foreclosure rentals or rent-to-own properties. In reality, the company has no connection with the properties listed.

When researchers compared the fraudulent postings that they discovered with the ones deemed suspicious by Craigslist, they found that the site flagged only 47 percent of the fake postings.

"We've shown that rental scams are often built on the same foundation — there are common templates, emails, IP addresses and other red flags that can be used to develop more sensitive detection techniques in the future," McCoy said on Tandon's website.